Eric and I said our goodbyes to Jordan and Dan and then decided to head out of Chile due to the lack of funds and the crappiness of the American dollar. We hopped a bus north to Santiago and then scooted back across the border to Mendoza, the wine capital of Argentina. For all the fancy bottles of wine that I have had while traveling down here, Mendoza was the source of it all so we took the oportunity to explore it a bit. We joined some new found friends from our hostel and took a bus to the outskirts of town where you can rent bicycles and ride around to about a dozen different old wineries for tastings and tours of the wine making processes.

I have never considered myself a baker let alone a good cook. But when four large boys have been working all day building rafts, cleaning around a lodge, and building river rock asado pits they tend to build up an appetite. Hence my motivation of being in a foreign country and having nothing but time, I started experimenting with baking. We used leftover lamb to make a stew and then I took lamb meat, made some dough and made empanadas (a staple dish of the locals in both Argentina and Chile that resembles a calzone except it is usually filled with a meat, egg, olives and veggies). I also took the opportunity to make my first pie. Great success!

So during my time at El Saltamontes aka the Grasshopper, I got this idea to take a picture that would emphasize the idea that there were a lot of hoppers around the area. Never got around to doing it at Jose and Erika´s. But the idea came back top me when I came to Monte´s place and every step you took along the banks scattered thousands of them. The idea was that I would have someone with a bunch of grasshoppers cupped in there hands and then when I gave them the go, I would then capture the hoppers exploding out in every direction trying to escape.

Ryan volunteered his hands for the model shoot and now all I needed was the bugs. We spent upwards of an hour wandering and diving into grass and brush trying to capture enough grasshoppers. I figure we ended up with about a couple hundred which we kept in a plastic bottle until showtime. Everything worked smoothly except them. When I had Ryan open his hands it was like the hoppers were all stunned and they just clung to his hands without moving. After a couple shakes, a few did there part and complied to spring from his hands as pictured above. I still think the idea could work but for now it´s back to the drawing board.

So in the middle of the week, I was out fishing with a couple of the clients at El Saltamontes. When photographing fly fishing, often times there are moments when not much is going on. Either your subject is untangling knots or the fishing may be slow. For the past half hour, we had been trying to hook into a brown trout we saw swiming in a particular eddy without success. Normally, it is in these situations that I will start looking beyond the subject for anything else that might catch my eye. It was during one of these moments when I was looking upstream away from the client when all of a sudden he shouts ¨Mink!¨ Sure enough I turn around to see this small brown weasel-like animal hoping upstream towards me. The client was on the opposing bank and I was on the side of the Mink. I watched as the mink scampered up the river rocks towards me with his eyes locked onto the fishing hole we had been occupying. Standing up on a rock, not ten feet away from me, he looked into the hole and dove out of sight. For the next minute we stood there dumbfounded as we watched this mink catch the very same brown we had been casting to and drag it up onto shore. I have never seen anything like it.

Mink like beavers are invasive species to Chile and Argentina and they have been threatening the native trout populations throughout numerous river systems down here. So when we got over the shock of being out fished by a 3 foot rodent, we tried to come to the rescue of the 14 inch brown and started trying to get it away from it´s captor. Our guide grabbed a stick in attempts to separate the animal from its catch. Mink fight back. After a hissing and stick scratching match the mink finally was able to drag the trout into a thick wood pile where our sticks could not reach. The trout was lost and the mink, in a victorious bragging move kept poping out of his little hole, chomping on bits of fresh trout and staring at us as if to say ¨Better luck next time fellas.¨ We admitted defeat.

Before the Jose and Erika, owners of the El Saltamontes Lodge, got into the fly fishing business, they had begun a very small Alpaca farming operation. Now many moons later, their Alpaca business has grown into and they have become the largest exporters of Alpaca fur in their region. I was able to watch a morning sheering session of some of the prized males that they own.